Advaita and Death — The Deathless Self
Advaita Vedanta's understanding of death — as the apparent dissolution of the body-mind, with the Atman unaffected — transforms the relationship to mortality from terror to equanimity.
The Katha Upanishad opens with Nachiketas's question to Yama (the god of death): 'What is there beyond death?' This question frames the entire teaching of Advaita on mortality. Yama's answer: there is the Atman — the deathless Self that was never born, that never dies, that the body's death cannot touch. 'It is not slain when the body is slain' (Katha Upanishad 2.19). The body is born, grows, and dies — these are facts of the body. The Atman has no birth and no death — these are not suppressed facts but simply irrelevant categories for that which has no form. Advaita's attitude toward death: for the person identified with the body-mind, death is the ultimate terror. For the one who has recognized their identity with the deathless Atman, death is the death of what they were never identified with — the body's dissolution is seen, but the Atman that sees is unaffected. This recognition generates not indifference to life but equanimity in the face of its inevitable end.
The Self is never born and never dies. It was not, it is not, it shall not be. It is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, primeval.
Philosopher Stephen Levine's 'A Year to Live' — a sustained meditation on living as if this were one's last year — and his research on working with dying people, both confirmed that the dissolution of identification with the body (not suppression but genuine recognition) is the most reliable source of equanimity at death.
Bhagavad Gita